My Story

So I was asked if I'd mind telling my story and answering some questions for an article being done on young widowers and their journey back to dating.  Obviously I said yes and jumped at the chance to talk about myself, after all it is one of my favorite pastimes.

This is the narrative that I sent off to the writer, I thought I'd share it here:

So, my story, well it begins with losing my wife I suppose, not that I lost her, I know exactly where she is, buried in the ground, in a cement vault, I'll always know where to find her, so she isn't lost, just dead.  Let's go back to how she got that way though.  Our daughter was about 4 months old when Claire developed constant neck pain. She went to see her doctor and was told that she needed to see a chiropractor. The PA thought maybe it was strain from holding and nursing the baby. After being treated by the chiropractor for 2 weeks with no change she was referred back to her primary care doctor. Labs were drawn and antibiotics prescribed as they now thought that the cause was an infection. When she returned for a follow up visit a week later and they looked at her white blood cell count her doctor told her she should go find a hematologist, that it looks like she has leukemia.  That Friday morning on March 7, 2008.  By 4pm I had left work and her mother had gotten an emergency appointment at the hospital where she works with one of their hematologist oncologists.  At around 4:30pm life changed forever when the bone marrow biopsy confirmed a diagnosis of AML. She was admitted to the ED immediately to start oral chemotherapy, and by the morning was in a room to begin one of the first of many hospital stays.

I was going to rewrite this part about hope and such over the course of her illness but I'll cut and paste this blog post:

I know that early on when Claire was first diagnosed with AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) on March 7, 2008, around 4:34pm in the Hematologist's office in Stony Brook, some things we don't forget, the news was devastating.  However being told that Leukemia is not a death sentence, that it isn't just manageable but curable gave us, and particularly me a lot of hope.  Especially after the first round of induction chemotherapy put it into remission and even the doctors were shocked by the rapid success.  And then against the odds they found a National Bone Marrow Registry donor, willing to donate, that was about as good a match as you're going to get from a non-relative.  While the treatment certainly changed everything we were still able to be a relatively normal functioning family during those early months when Claire was not in the hospital.  I had total faith that while there was a long hard road ahead, that she was going to make a full recovery.  I believed that this was indeed God's plan, that the entire ordeal was to make us closer as a family, to teach us the value of spending time together, to teach us how precious life is.  I honestly had no doubts about what the outcome would be.  This faith held on for a while, through the leukemia coming back, through an inability to achieve a total remission, through the bone marrow transplant.  That bring us to the leukemia coming back after the transplant, to the day we went from thinking that we were on the road to eventually returning to a normal life, to being told that some of the best doctors in the world have no tricks left up their sleeves and that they'll try to buy Claire as many weeks or months as they can.  That day was actually when my mourning began, mourning our hopes and dreams, our future children, that day was probably the worst, definitely worse than her actual passing, because by the time she died she was really suffering and not herself.  We made the best of those 8 months, did a lot of things, but she kept getting weaker, and things kept getting harder.

So now that brings us to my life after her death, but you need a little more background first for some of what I'll write to make sense.  We moved in with my in-laws when she was diagnosed.  That meant her and I and our daughter were sharing a house with my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my grandmother-in-law whose house is actually is.  We had to in order to facilitate childcare, plus where we were living wasn't a place that Claire could come home to in a neutropenic state when she was home in between hospital stays.  Currently we are still there more than 2 years later, and if certainly has it's challenges.  This living situation has offered my daughter some consistency, but had also made my MIL into much more of a mother figure than she ought to be, for both of their sake.  Not having a place of my own also takes a huge toll on me, at this point I'm well beyond ready to move out, get my own place, but between the economic challenge that presents and the childcare nightmare I would have it just isn't happening yet.

So getting back to my wife's death.  She died 2 days before our daughter's second birthday.  We had moved in with my in-laws when she was diagnosed, and this is where she was when she died.  She was home on Hospice for less than 2 weeks when she took her last shallow breaths.  Her death certificate says she died around 4am, but that was when the hospice nurse arrived to pronounce.  She actually died around 12:15am, which is when my MIL called to me that she doesn't think she's breathing anymore and I grabbed my stethoscope to confirm.  That was an early October Sunday morning at that point, the day after my daughter's 2nd birthday party on Saturday.  The party that we had with Claire lying comatose on the couch while we ate pizza and cake.  While she'll be at each of our daughter's birthday's in spirit, I have no doubt that she hung on those last few days so she'd be at that one in body as well.

The days after were the wake and the funeral, she was buried and I went back to work a few days later.  Things returned back to normal in some ways, except without the trips into the city for clinic visits and the commuting back and forth day and night, sleeping in a chair at the hospital and then heading to work before my parking spot became illegal.  I spent a lot of time driving around looking for parking on the UES of Manhattan in those days.  As time went by though the void became more and more, a night in the hospital by her bed was better than a night in my bed alone.  I threw myself into a project at the house that I had been planning to do for years, finishing part of the basement as a playroom space for my daughter and a place for my desk.  I put all of myself into this project, let it consume all of this time I now had.  I put off other things, like dealing with going through her stuff, old mail, anything that didn't need to be done.  When spring came I switched gears and built a memorial garden against a new fence I built, also built a garden at the cemetery at the base of the upright monument I had hustled to get put in before the ground froze.

At some point in there my daughter and I hung out with one of my late wife's friends a few times.  I never wanted to go somewhere without a woman along, mainly because I don't like the idea of bringing my daughter into the men's room.  This was about 6 months after Claire had passed.  She had just ended a long term but dead end relationship, we were both lonely, so we started hanging out a few times.  It didn't work out.  I needed space, I was still processing things, she wanted my undivided attention, and above all else I had a daughter to raise, my undivided attention will never be something I can offer anyone.  It was good in some ways though, the idea of having a relationship with someone else acted as a catalyst for me.  It got me thinking about things, it got me looking to talk to other widows and widowers about their experiences and their journeys.  Before that I had only met a few through Facebook.

One of the things I did find on FB was a Widow(er) Walk locally here on LI.  I went with my daughter that first year, I met a few people, but didn't really stay in touch.  We also started doing the LLS Light the Night walk, and continued doing the ACS Relay for Life event which I had been involved with for years.  At the beginning of last year though I heard about a new web community for the young and widowed.  I was able to join as a beta user and was very active there in the early days of the community.  The community, Widowed Village, run by SSLF still exists, but I'm not as active as I once was.  Through this community I became aware of another SSLF event though, Camp Widow.

By this time I had been talking to one particular widow a few states away on FB for a few months.  Our circumstances were different, but she was even younger than I and now a sole parent as well.  We had become friends and had even discussed that given the right circumstances me might be able to be more.  When registration for camp came along we actually decided that we would go together, it would be a good opportunity to meet.  We were both on the east coast and camp was on the west, so we could connect through a common airport and fly across the country together.  We'd share a room too to keep costs down as the trip was already going to be quite expensive.  Unfortunately this whole plan didn't pan out, she had some major health issue in the period of time leading up to camp and was unable to make it.  Unfortunately our friendship isn't what it once was, but I've found that seems to happen when you are online friends awaiting that big moment when you meet in real life, and then it doesn't happen.  The entire dynamic changes after that point.

I did start talking intensely with another widow, from across the country, who was down on her luck, didn't have children, who was going to camp.  We did meet at camp, but it turned out we weren't quite as compatible as we had hoped.  Things just weren't quite what they appeared.  Factor in the cross country thing, and well, that was probably never really a good idea in the first place.  While it was another learning experience, it was also a mistake.  I'd have gotten more out of the Camp Widow experience if I had just gone   to network and spend time with online friends, with no romantic interest.

After that I met a divorcee online, or she found me actually.  She was interesting, her daughter was adorable, but she turned out to be a little nuts.  My daughter and I went on a few outings with them, and we went out just us twice, but that was more than enough to know that there was no future there.  Plus I'm not so into dating a divorcee to begin with, there is enough potential for drama with the family of a deceased parent when dating someone with children, I don't even want to imagine dealing with a living other parent.

This brings me to another widowed friend, also has 2 children, that was a chance meeting also on FB.  She was only one state away, we hit it off great chatting, texting, talking.  We both saw great potential for a future together.  We were both pretty firmly planted where we are though, but as time went by, I found myself actually debating moving if we hit it off.  Things got to that point where we needed to meet, see if there was really something there when we met in person, and the meeting didn't pan out, which I guess is just as well because we never got to reschedule it, things fell apart after that.  For me this experience though really renewed my belief that not only can I be happy and in a relationship again, but I will.

Up to this point I had a pretty rigid set of criteria in my mind as to what I was looking for in a person.  This was partly what I'd always been drawn to, but was in large part due to my experience with the incompatible person at camp.  I had broken a few of those rules though with this last online experience, and that didn't seem to be a big deal.  Now while all this was going on I had also gotten roped into attending a bereavement group.  Remember that Widow(er) walk?  Well we did it again last year, and we even met two other families on the playground, I even retrieved a cute little boy from the playset before we left.  Well the same woman who does the walk runs this group.  She had also roped the mother of that cute little boy into it.  We were both much further out from our loss than the other group members, and we were told we were there almost as success stories.  She herself (the one who runs the group) is 11 years out and got remarried to a widower after 5 years.

Well this mother and I had chatted on FB from time to time.  I had a sort of image of her as someone that I would not get along with very well outside of the occasional conversation online or at a group meeting.  Well it turns out that while this group is going on, and this whole online "relationship" is falling apart we did do some talking.  I got to know her better and came to find out that some of my assumptions were in fact inaccurate.  That brings us to the current.  Her and I have been dating for about a month.  Our children get along like siblings, and we really do seem to complement one another very well.  Only time will tell what the future holds, but there is a good chance that I was just looking too hard.  It is a definite possibility that my second wife is a widow with two kids that I barely gave the time of day too on a playground not even a year ago.

That brings me to another debate though, first, it is completely different for a widower vs. a widowed father to get back into the dating world and have a new relationship.  The second is the two schools of thought on dating with children.  I firmly believe that you are dating me and my child, we're an inseparable unit. So my child must like her and vice-versa or it isn't worth the time and effort involved.  Many other say you should keep the children separate, that they shouldn't meet until at least 6 months when you know there is really something there.  Well what a waste of 6 months that would be if they don't hit it off and never will.  Not to mention that if both people have children that is a lot of expense or other people's time watching your children for those 6 months, not to mention all the time you spend away from your own children.  I understand that the children can get attached, and that it can be hard on them if it doesn't work out, but personally, I'm not going to spend any time on someone if I don't at least think they've got long term potential, so chances are that we'd get to 6 months and they'd meet the children anyway.  My way not only do we get to spend time together, but we get to do things with the children.  In the last month we went on a trip to Sesame Place, The Bronx Zoo, Ice Skating, and a number of other outings.  I likely wouldn't have done half of those things with my daughter if we hadn't been all doing them together because it would have been just us with nobody to go with us, and we get right back to that whole men's room issue.   I think one reason I care so much about my daughter getting along with anyone who could potentially be my new wife, feeling that it should be natural and not forced, is because anything else I would feel like I was doing Claire a disservice forcing an unwanted person upon her child for my own benefit.  I mean for the sake of my daughter's happiness I wouldn't want to do that either.

Narrative

A few of you may know that I was asked to share my story with a reporter who is gathering material on young widowers and their journey back to dating.  In writing the narrative he requested I'm pulling from stuff I've written previously, and this is one piece worth reposting here:

I know that early on when my late wife was first diagnosed with AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) on March 7, 2008, around 4:34pm in the Hematologist's office in Stony Brook, some things we don't forget, the news was devastating.  However being told that Leukemia is not a death sentence, that it isn't just manageable but curable gave us, and particularly me a lot of hope.  Especially after the first round of induction chemotherapy put it into remission and even the doctors were shocked by the rapid success.  And then against the odds they found a National Registry donor, willing to donate, that was about as good a match as you're going to get from a non-relative.  While the treatment certainly changed everything we were still able to be a relatively normal functioning family during those early months when Claire was not in the hospital.  I had total faith that while there was a long hard road ahead, that she was going to make a full recovery.  I believed that this was indeed God's plan, that the entire ordeal was to make us closer as a family, to teach us the value of spending time together, to teach us how precious life is.  I honestly had no doubts about what the outcome would be.  This faith held on for a while, through the leukemia coming back, through an inability to achieve a total remission, through the bone marrow transplant.  That bring us to the leukemia coming back after the transplant, to the day we went from thinking that we were on the road to eventually returning to a normal life, to being told there some of the best doctors in the world have no tricks left up their sleeves and that they'll try to buy Claire as many weeks or months as they can.  That day was actually when my mourning began, mourning our hopes and dreams, our future children, that day was probably the worst, definitely worse than her actual passing, because by that point she was suffering and not herself, and it was almost a relief.  We made the best of those 8 months, did a lot of things, but she kept getting weaker, and things kept getting harder.

S and M

So, I haven't written in a while, as y'all know M is out of the picture, I was defriended by 3 people in 2 days, no final note or anything, just gone, life goes on, I still don't get why she felt the need to leave WV, but to each their own right.

Well I'm actually thankful to M for leaving, objectively looking at it now, while it sounded fantastic, I've been able to identify a number of things that would have become issues, and that isn't factoring in the distance.  So I am glad that things ended as harshly as they did, it put it in the past, otherwise I may have remained hung up on it for a good long while.

I also realized some things during the time talking to and after talking to M, things about who I am looking for and what really matters.  Things that put me into a better position to see that those things might be available right here with someone I already know, someone who sorta has a crush on me already.  Someone that was flying below my radar for a number of reasons (one of them could be that she literally exists below my field of vision, the top of her head barely reaches the bottom button on my polo shirts).  That person is S.

So we will see what happens...

The Holidays

So the first holiday season the loss was fresh, I was consumed with making sure the headstone was in before the ground froze, getting the cemetery decorated, wrapping up all the stuff that she had already bought for our daughter, we threw ourselves into Christmas because it was something to distract us.  Last year I was into doing Christmas with my daughter, she was my little helper, she was into it, and I was more than happy to do it for her.  I did the shopping, which I enjoy, and the season really wasn't bad.  We did more decorating at the cemetery, there was something missing, but we did ok.  This year I'm just not feeling it, I love the holidays, but my daughter was more interested in helping the neighbors decorate yesterday than helping me, so why should I bother, it's not my house, if I'm not doing it for her then who am I doing it for.  If my wife were still alive by now we sure as hell wouldn't be living here, we'd have our own place somewhere, and I'd be decorating it the way I want, garland, white lights, classical Christmas, a few kid things for my daughter, but not the over the top everything colored look that they do here.  Or maybe not, it would depend on the house, and what my wife and daughter wanted, I'm flexible on the outdoors, for the tree inside though, and living room decor, I'm not as flexible.  I wish I cared more, but I'm having a hard time.  I don't feel like doing this all myself.  I'd like to be doing it with my wife, but I'm too logical for my mind to go there, I know she's dead and that isn't an option, so my longing isn't to have her here, it's to have someone here, even a good friend, someone to share the experience with, so that it's fun again, and doesn't feel like it's a chore.  I'm supposed to have more kids by now, my daughter needs other kids around, she wants other kids around, she'd be getting into decorating if she had other little people to do it with.  Not to mention that my life would be so much easier if she had little people to keep her company, I know that having more than one child makes more work for a parent, but it also makes it much easier in some ways...  Anyway, I guess we do need to get moving, it's 1pm and we haven't really started our day yet, because I just don't have the motivation anymore...

Signs

I've never been a big believer in signs, there have been a few times in my life though when I have felt that I was getting signs, I've always chalked it up to the rationalization that if you deep down know what you want, you're going to see things that point you in that direction, and that made sense.  I've always been one to explain things away with logic, probably because I wanted to, I like logic.  So far this week though I've had a few signs.  They might not seem like much, but I pull into the parking lot at Hannah's school on Monday, and parked next to me is a car I'd never seen there before, it was a car I don't know I've ever seen in person, a Chevy Traverse.  There have been a few other things, but just now something happened that totally caught me off guard, I pulled up the TV guide listings page to look something up, and the same ad kept popping up, over and over, for a store I had never even heard of until recently, White House Black Market, it was honestly like getting slapped in the face. I suppose that the site could be reading a cookie on my machine because I did google the place when I first heard of it, but what are the chances of that popping up right now on Thanksgiving morning.  I'm not going to start speculating about what it means right now, but it's hard not to think that just maybe I should be thankful that the person I associate these things with is in my life now in some fashion, even as a friend.

10 years...

Ten years ago today, my friend at the time, originally the friend of my then recently ex-g/f, you who know the story, know the details.  Anyway, it was Thanksgiving of 2001, a Thursday evening.  I got a text, asking what I was doing that night.  At the time I was in Hoboken, NJ at my aunt and uncle's apt having dinner, so I replied something like "not much, won't be back on the island until later".  We texted back and forth a few times and somehow ended up with plans to catch a movie later on that evening.  Now at this point we really were just friends, we enjoyed spending time together, had gone to her little cousins soccer games a few times, hung out with the kids she babysat once or twice, but that was the extent.  I mean she was cute, great with kids, and just a generally good hearted and fun person, but I was privy to some unflattering details of her past having just dated her friend for the past 11 months, so I wasn't really looking at her as anything more than a fun companion, we enjoyed time together, it was fun.  That was until that evening, we met at the movie theater, saw the movie, but afterwards neither of us was anxious to go home.  So we went to sit in her car and talk.  Which we did, but then we kissed, and kissed some more, and so November 22, 2001 is the day that I started dating my late wife, the first time at least, 10 years ago today...

My Daughter

So my little girl isn't so little anymore, she tells me to take her home "straightaway" after school, and navigates apps on her table with no assistance.  She's growing up so quickly, and day by day seems to be turning into a little version of myself.  Now as flattering as this is, it's probably not for the best, in many ways she'd probably be better off taking on some of her mother's traits, but I'm what she's exposed to day in and day out.  If she were more like her late mother her room would always be clean, she'd always be on time, she'd be neurotic about getting her daily to-do list completed.  Of course there is also a list of things that would make her like her mother that I just assume she not pick up, in these departments I'm happy to have her follow in my footsteps.  She does need some positive non-grandma female influences in her life though.  I think we're going to start doing more outings with the local widows and their kids, I think it'll be good for both of us.